They say the fourth branch of government is the bureaucracy—those men and women of the government who are not elected into office but who nevertheless play a key role in government policies from their day to day duties in various government agencies and services. The intelligence community has their own bureaucracy and this is a memoir of one of them who went on to retire in his three decade career with the CIA as one of its deputy director. While the word “bureaucracy” probably doesn’t sound interesting this book is far from boring since it is about one of the world’s famous intelligence agency and the author managed to write in a way that held my attention up to the very end. A big factor is also the subject matter: This is an insider’s look at CIA’s effort with the war on terror by an important player in that war. And while the CIA went through the book to ensure no classified information was leaked, I was still surprised at how much the author could share in the book.